


Dove

by Mobsicle



Category: TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Crown, Lore - Freeform, Other, tomorrowxtogether, txt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 09:11:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17999009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mobsicle/pseuds/Mobsicle
Summary: This is just a drabble inspired by the intro of TXT's comeback show~I hope you enjoyed the read!





	Dove

The pain started out faint. It loomed in the background, barely noticeable like a whisper from far away. At first, he didn’t think much of it. It was just one of those headaches that came when you hadn’t slept enough or when your drinking habit matched that of a dessert. A glass of water and a nap later it would be gone, and he’d be able to live his life free from bother again. However, the headache stayed. It didn’t just stay, its intensity sky-rocketed. He woke up, a throbbing sensation crawling from his forehead over his temples to the very back.

He sighed and got up. Eyes half-shut from tiredness he sat there for a while not sure whether to take pain meds or wait for the aching to vanish. He tilted his head a bit, a weight on his shoulders that he wasn’t accustomed to. It felt like someone was holding him down ever so lightly. It wasn’t enough to be disturbed by it but enough to _not feel right._

“What…” he sighed, trying to not give into the temptation of falling back into his bed and sleep for another few hours. His body surely needed it, he thought, contemplating over how tired he still felt.

Unwilling but driven by years of good raising, he got up to wash his face. He noticed it as soon as he caught himself in the reflection of the bathroom mirror, but he refused to accept it as inevitable and undeniable truth. He closed his eyes, closed them tightly.

“Two…, three…, four…,” he counted, numbers passing trembling lips.

It was one of those moments where his brain played him tricks. His mother called them hallucinations. Sometimes they happened, not often enough to be worried, and as they happened, they vanished. On a count of five.

“Five.”

He opened his eyes, but they were still there. His eyes widened, slowly travelled up the length of intricate, brown antlers, slid back down to his face. This one was persistent, he thought. It didn’t want to go on the count of five. Maybe counting to five another time would do the trick. The doctor had warned him that sometimes medicine didn’t work the way it was supposed to. In times like that it was always best to try again and again.  
And again.

“15…” he counted.

They were still there.

Disbelief turned into realization and realization grew into a full-blown panic. His breathing quickened while his vision grew blurry. White spots exploded in front of him, he felt his consciousness fading.

 

When he woke up the sun had fully risen already. It was shining through his generous window, touching his cheeks gently. The pain had vanished almost completely. All that was left remained a subtle whisper in the back of his mind.

Maybe…? Maybe this was nothing but a bad dream? Maybe he’d fallen off his bed and hit his head. He _was_ a heavy sleeper. It wouldn’t surprise him if he’d just fallen off his bed and continued to sleep like nothing happened. His mind was susceptible to his environment. Everything found a place in his little dream world.

He got up, convinced he’d be fine now; that the antlers were nothing but a fantasy his subconsciousness had come up with. A glance into the mirror, from the side, tentatively peeking to mask any full-blown shock, proved him wrong. They were still there. Still intricate but larger; more _present_. With a shivering hand he touched the antlers. They were strangely soft. Nothing like he imagined. It almost felt like he was petting a deer.

“Oh no,” he mouthed.

This was bad. Either he’d fallen into a hallucination deeply enough to still see that, or something very, very weird had happened to him before he woke up. He looked at the base of his antlers. His skin was bulked up a little; a reddish tint insinuated recent growth. He touched it and winced. It felt tender.

“Oh no,” he whispered now.

The following days proved to be tougher than he wanted imagined. He’d tried to go about his day as usual; ignoring the antlers and the stares; even the hurtful comments from other people. Soon, however, the weight of those words became unbearable. He chose to hide whatever growth had happened. Upon his plea, his mother knit a custom beanie for him. She wasn’t sure why he wanted one; insisted on everything being perfectly fine.

“I don’t see why you’d want to hide your forehead, dear.” She sighed, starting on a new ball of yarn. Her eyes rested on him, hands skillfully resuming work.

“Especially with this…”

“Don’t you see it?”

“See what?”

She stopped now, observing her son closely. Her eyes narrowed, curiosity soon became maternal worry. She put her knitting tools away and pat her lap.

“Are you hallucinating again?”

He looked down onto his hands; the warmth of his mother’s arms around him consoling his agitated senses. “I don’t know,” he admitted. He felt hot tears collecting in his eyes. If she couldn’t see his antlers it had to be a hallucination; a really bad one.

“Listen honey,” she began. Her arms tightened around him. He noticed a faint smell of vanilla. Her favorite fragrance.   
“Your hallucinations are nothing evil. They can be scary and outlandish, but they will never do you harm. No one thinks you’re weird.”

He thought back to all the moments others looked at him; at his _antlers_. How they pointed at his forehead and masked a giggle behind their palm. If it was nothing but a hallucination, why did others notice? Why didn’t his mother?

“Okay,” he said, feeling his tears again. He slipped from his mother’s lap.

 

He hadn’t dared looking at his antlers from that point on. Whenever he’d wash his face, he’d carefully avoid looking up. There was always a hint in his peripheral vision, but no clear picture as long as he chose not to look at them. Sometimes he even successfully convinced himself they, in fact, weren’t even there.

Until it was time to sleep. Lying on his stomach, as usual, wasn’t possible anymore. His antlers got in the way of such endeavor. At that time, night time, he grew painfully aware of his fate. Night time was when running turned to walking and, finally, to standing still. His thoughts, occupied with everything but his antlers, would suddenly begin to circle around nothing else. The velvety feeling of them; the strangely familiar warmth as if they were _living._

A sob travelled up his throat like a big air bubble. He felt the pain of it radiating in his throat as he tried to subdue it, but it was no use. Another came, this time stronger and less merciful. Soon he sat there crying his eyes out. Bawling, screaming as tears rushed down his flushed cheeks.

_Why me?_ He thought over and over again. _What did I ever do to deserve this?_

Just when his tears didn’t seem to be enough anymore, a bright shimmer grew into a blinding light right in front of him. It swallowed him whole, warmth surrounding his exhausted limbs. He closed his eyes, a strange sense of calm conquering his troubled thoughts.

“That’s weird.”

A faint voice.

“Why do you have that thing on your head?”

He opened his eyes. A boy was looking down at him. Face close.

“Who are you?” The boy asked.

“Me?”

“I don’t see anyone else here so…”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t? That’s weird! I don’t know what to call you then! The boy with the strange beanie?”

He sat up, trying to make sense of everything around him. His surroundings were unusually bright. The floor was soft, like grass, but there was no hint of any green. Everything looked like someone had used water colors.

“What should I call you?”

He looked at the other boy and saw two, big wings stretching out to either side of his body.

“Wings!”

“That’s a weird name but I’ll take it.”

“No, you have wings!” He started laughing. There was someone else with weird characteristics! He wasn’t the only one!

“Well, too late. I’ll call you Wings now. And, yes, I have wings. Cool, right?”

Wings looked at them again. They were pristine and looked unusually sturdy. Nothing like one would imagine angel wings to look like. More like…

“Bird wings…”

“Is Bird your surname? Your parents sure love a joke.” The boy giggled and got a hold of Wings’ beanie. One motion was all it took to pull it off.

“Antlers… They are beautiful. They look nothing like my wings. They are brown and soft.”

He felt the other’s touch on his antlers. It tickled but it didn’t feel uncomfortable. For the first time he felt like there was nothing bad about having antlers. They were… pretty and unique, right?

“Where’d you get those?”

“They just grew one day,” Wings said. “Who are you?”

“Call me Dove. I don’t know my actual name. I suddenly appeared here and forgot my name.”

Wings rummaged in his memory. Everything was there: the face of his mother, the subtle vanilla scent of her skin, his room. His name was gone, however. He drew a blank. Why? Where had he gone to? Why did that light suddenly appear?

“I don’t know either,” Dove replied.

Wings looked up at him. Had he heard his thoughts?

“No, you are literally just saying whatever you think. Might wanna check up on that.”

“Ah! How do we leave?”

“I don’t know,” Dove admitted, but he smiled. “It doesn’t matter, though, does it? Let’s walk around and see what this place is made of! Come!”

Wings got up. The weight on his body gone, he felt a genuine smile bloom on his lips.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a drabble inspired by the intro of TXT's comeback show~  
> I hope you enjoyed the read!


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